Air Mail

John Ford making a fine aviation film about pilots transporting mail. Kind of like a more down to earth version of MGM's star-studded "Night Flight (1933)" which tried to be too grand. Here Ford puts on the Ford touch of letting the simple folks live their simple quiet lives in between the risky flying. And it works better too. One feel one get closer to the people that way mellowing it out with normal day routines within the crashes. Pat O'Brien steals the show as the obnoxious show-off.

Interesting Ford film in that it is interested more in the rhythms of these people's lives rather than advancing a well-defined plot. Ford fills the film with expressionist flourishes, includes one of the more disturbingly violent scenes in his oeuvre, and generally avoids the typical traps of a genre film like this. He creates a distinctive sense of place and of danger on several occasions. And the brief Christmas program scene is reminiscent of a similar Christmas scene in Donovan's Reef.